Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-11 on immigration.
The Bloc Québécois sees problems with the refugee appeal division. It has always insisted on a mechanism to review refugee decisions.
At first glance, this bill unfortunately leads us to believe that it is based on the typical Conservative ideology whereby we have the good on one side and the bad on the other. This raises concerns about things working properly in future, especially since the bill contains a number of elements governed by regulation. To govern by regulation means that the minister of the moment—not necessarily the current minister—could want to influence decisions.
This bill makes it look like we are attacking the problem of false refugee claimants. This reform is based on a discriminatory principle and one that is fundamentally detrimental for refugees.
I would like to remind the House that people have a right to refugee status. It is a fundamental international right based on the solidarity among peoples and countries. Refugee status is not something to be considered with a certain amount of paternalism. Because our country is richer, it can start distinguishing the genuine claimants from the false ones? That is rather frightening.
Countries often benefit from the refugees they take in. For example, the refugees in France, England, Spain and Italy have made tremendous intellectual contributions and helped these countries broaden their horizons. There have been some major waves of immigration. Refugees left Russia to go to France and England. They made an enormous contribution to their chosen lands. Refugees are often very talented people. We are not talking here about minor immigration. Refugees are people who had to leave their countries because their lives had become untenable.
There were some Chileans who had to leave their country. Would we have considered Chile a good country or a bad one when some people had to leave because of the dictatorial regime that took over? Even some members of the Chilean parliament had to leave and seek refuge in Quebec. We had an extraordinary colony of engineers, writers and musicians, who were all refugees.
Would a bill like this one, but with regulations, have been able to distinguish between false claimants—because there were some—and genuine ones? Can a piece of legislation draw this distinction? I do not think so.
The committee should work very hard on this issue. We should not exclude people who come from countries like Chile. When the dictatorial regime overthrew Allende, I think we would have concluded that Chile respected human rights—not at the very time of the coup but a few months later—and that people there were treated fairly.
In fact, though, people were harassed in the exercise of their duties. They were harassed psychologically because they did not support the new ideology. As I said earlier, some of these people were very talented members of the previous government, while others actually supported Pinochet but were taking advantage of the situation to move to a country where life was especially good.
I provide this example because even though I know the minister is well intended, he will not always be there. There will be other ministers. How will they be able to decide which of the immigrants from a particular country are the good ones and which are the bad? That will be a major problem if we try to distinguish the good immigrants from the bad ones solely on the basis of their country of origin.
I would like to raise another problem, the borders. This bill gives the Canada Border Services Agency 100 additional officers who would conduct investigations, issue arrest warrants and detain unsuccessful claimants. Naturally, we are not opposed to the idea of increasing the number of officers. However, I find it strange that we are not trying to reassign the members of the RCMP who held these border positions. At every border post, the RCMP used to mafia refugees from crossing into our country. Yes, there are mafia refugees, and where I come from, it is a significant problem.
When the Conservative Party was in opposition, it was in favour of maintaining that force. When it came to power, we thought it wanted to restore it, since it was always against removing it. But no, it has never put it back. Since 2006, this has been a taboo subject that it does not want to talk about.
I think we have to divide these new positions up between border services officers and the RCMP. For the bill as a whole, we are in fact talking about $540 million. It seems to me they could have thought about that, since this is part of the immigration we do not want. We do not want the mafia here. We do not want people who belong to the cartels passing themselves off as refugees. We are in complete agreement, we do not want those people.
Why not hire , as was the case before, RCMP constables, who are well-armed, well-informed and well aware of the situation? I am not saying that the border officers do not do a good job, but to each their own job. One group is prepared to deal with false refugee claimants who belong to organized crime groups, and the other group looks after refugees who also may not be welcome for other reasons, but who are not part of the mafia and who are not known cartel members.
Those two issues in particular should be examined in committee. They are important points because we have to be able to tell the difference. Once again, it benefits our country to grant refugee protection to people who need it. We have to reduce waiting times, we completely agree. In my riding, there are people who have suffered unspeakable things. They waited 19 or 20 or 22 months before getting answers. We have to cut that time, I agree completely. But if they had not waited so long to introduce this bill, the problem might not be so serious.
It is nonetheless a bill that we really want to examine in committee, because its principle is worth considering.